The 1916 US Naval Act and its 1918 proposed expansion triggered a Naval Arms Race between it and it’s allied nations of Great Britain and Japan.
Finally, the United States Government invited the principal naval powers to a conference to discuss the situation and end the Naval Arms Race.
A bold opening suggestion from the US government resulted in the scrapping and halting of most naval capital ships.
The Washington Naval Treaty signed on the 6th of February 1922

350 Years ago, the Treaty of Breda was signed at the Dutch city of Breda, 31 July, 1667, by England, the Dutch Republic, France, and Denmark-Norway. It brought a hasty end to the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-1667) in favour of the Dutch. It was a typical quick uti possidetis treaty. In the latter stages of the war, the Dutch had prevailed. Lieutenant-Admiral-General Michiel de Ruyter virtually controlled the seas around the south coast of England. His presence encouraged English commissioners to sue for peace quickly. Negotiations, which had been long protracted, and had actually begun in Breda before the raid, took only ten days to conclude after resumption of talks.

The status in international law of operational warships has been long established. In contrast, the status of such vessels after they have sunk has been, and remains, a matter of considerable uncertainty. The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) provides no rules whatsoever relating to sunken warships nor to wrecks more generally. However, over the last decades, technological advances have led to the discovery of many new wreck sites, fuelling commercial interest in these wrecks. As we have seen in our previous blog, illegal scavenging of war wrecks has caused significant upset among governments, war veterans and historians who want to preserve the final resting place of sailors who went down with their ships.

An international investigation has been launched into the mysterious disappearance of Dutch Second World War shipwrecks which have vanished from the bottom of the Java Sea off the coast of Indonesia. In a press statement on 15 November, the Dutch Defence Ministery has confirmed that the wrecks of two of its warships that sank in 1942, the HNLMS De Ruyter (see photo) and HNLMS Java, have completely gone, while large parts of a third, the HNLMS Kortenaer, are also missing. The Dutch Defence Ministry immediateley launched an investigation as to what happened to the wrecks, suggesting the wrecks may have been illegally salvaged for the scrap metal market.

Has any mammal inspired such romantic images of the sea and love for nature as much as the whale, yet aroused such controversy in global environmental conservation? Legal efforts to protect whales, however, extend beyond whaling issues. Even beyond protection itself. What about legal arrangements dealing with such large marine mammals found stranded on the shoreline? This so-called phenomenon of Cetacean stranding certainly is something that arouses public interest and emotion.

Today, Wednesday April 6th, citizens in the Netherlands can cast their votes in an unprecedented advisory referendum. The question put to a vote is whether the Dutch government should ratify the European Union’s Association Agreement with Ukraine or not. This blog provides some background of the EU’s Association Agreement with Ukraine and the lead up to today’s referendum.

In his address, the King has discussed the significance of the United Nations, and the contribution the Kingdom of the Netherlands has made in the fields of peace, justice and development. He also mentioned the Peace Palace!

On the 24th of June 2015, the civil section of the Dutch court of The Hague, the Netherlands, ordered the Dutch government to adjust its environmental policies in order to reduce the collective greenhouse emissions of the Netherlands by 25% compared to 1990 by the end of 2020. News of this unusual judgment spread across the globe as it was the first time that a court ordered a government to step up its game on climate change. This post will provide readers with a summary of the judgment, as well as some thoughts on its merits.

The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday, 18 June 1815, 200 years ago, near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. The French army under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by the armies of the Seventh Coalition, comprising an Anglo-Dutch-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington combined with a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher. Find out more about the Napoleonic wars, the Congress of Vienna and the European balance of power in our collection.

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Communications

Modern means of communications connect all corners of the earth. Internationally the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is in place to regulate Telecommunications. ITU is the leading United Nations agency for information and communication technology issues, and the global focal point for governments and the private sector in developing networks and services.